StarCraft 2 sales blitz a success: sales crush console games

Everyone knew StarCraft 2 was going to be a hit, but the sales are enough to …

There may be some flaws in StarCraft 2, but the market doesn't seem to care: the game has taken the number one sales slot in the United States in July, well above the best-selling console games. In fact, if you take the sales of NCAA Football 11 on both platforms and combine them, you get 692,000 units sold. Single-platform title StarCraft 2 sold 721,000 units.

These numbers are only part of the story, as they only count retail sales. It's safe to assume Blizzard sold a significant number of units digitally; raise your hand if you bought your copy directly from Battle.net. The 721,000 figure was also reached during the last few days of July, as the game was released on the 27th. Imagine what the sales will be like once it has been on the shelves for an entire month!

An aerial shot of gamers swarming their local midnight launch. ^__^

Sales were so strong they buoyed the numbers for the whole US industry. "While video game retail sales show a very slight decline versus last July, we have to consider the success of Starcraft 2 this month, which helped the PC games category to realize a 103 percent increase in dollars over last July," NPD Analyst Anita Frazier wrote.

It gets better for Blizzard when you look at international sales. Blizzard announced that it sold a million copies worldwide in the game's first 24 hours of availability, and sold 1.5 million in the first 48 hours. The game was released simultaneously in North America, Europe, South Korea, Australia, New Zealand, Russia, Brazil, Chile, Argentina, Singapore, Indonesia, Malaysia, Thailand, the Philippines, and Taiwan, as well as the regions of Hong Kong and Macau. In total, the game was launched in 11 different languages across five different continents. Blizzard claims it only took 24 hours to become the best-selling PC game of the year.